The NBA Thread.

Man, it’s a lot tougher to get down towards the floor at Wells Fargo Center than it was at TD Garden.

 

Seeing Danny the GOAT with my own eyes, best experience of my life.

 

Jimmy Buckets and James Harden looking like Top 10 players tonight

 

That was one of the most exciting live sporting events I've been too. Got to witness an epic 40 point performance from Jimmy Butler, who had everyone nervous the whole game. He kept making shot after shot after shot, and the crowd was definitely feeling it. Got to see Harden go for 16 in the 4th with a number of big 3's late. Embiid struggled a bit but still played well overall. Drew the 4th foul on Adebayo (I didn't think it was a foul), which might have been the difference in the game. Pretty sure he sat the remaining 8:30 of the 3rd quarter after that.

Didn't get as much Tobias as we hoped because of foul trouble, but that alley oop late was epic. I stood up (as did the entire arena) and started spinning my rally towel when Embiid got that offensive rebound while they were up 6. I saw the oop coming right after that and slammed the towel down with him. That place [uck fay]ing erupted.



Great game/experience. I liked TD Garden better overall, largely because of the location and the access to different parts of the arena. But tonight was a far better game, roughly half as expensive, and the food/drinks were much cheaper as well. There's also just something different about a Philly crowd. They're [uck fay]ing savages. During a timeout or between quarters, there were some dudes doing crazy dunks off trampolines and shit. They missed their dunks like, 3 or 4 times in a row, and the whole arena started booing them. I was cracking up lol... They weren't even joking about it - just straight up booing their asses.

 

How about Dame going 5-17 for 12 points and a -29 as they got swept by the Warriors? How about getting thoroughly dominated by Jrue Holiday for an entire series as you get swept by the Pelicans? Are those things top 10 players do, or did people just not overreact to one game, one series or, in Dame's case, getting swept two years in a row?

 

The 2017 Warriors? Possibly the best team ever assembled? I'm not going to be too hard him about that, especially considering he went for 34, 31, and 34 in the other 3 games. 1 bad game isn't a big deal if you surround it with excellence.

The Pelicans series is probably the best example you can point to, and I don't really have a great answer for it. Jrue Holiday was at the peak of his defensive prowess (1st team all-defense that year, if I remember correctly), so him giving Dame trouble isn't all that surprising. AD was also first team all defense that year, so it's not surprising that the Pelicans won the series, despite everyone picking Portland. Dame was rightly criticized for that flop, and the Pelicans might have made more noise had they not run into the GSW buzz saw in the next round. Dame also didn't have a game in that series as bad as the one Tatum just had, and it's worth noting that the Blazers came back the very next season and made the WCF.

 

Odds the Grizzlies go with the ol "put the worst player on the team in to take out Curry" approach tonight.

 

Robert Williams out for the Celtics seems big.

 

Lol Smart basically tackles Giannis, and they call a phantom foul on Lopez to give Horford the and 1. What a sequence.

 

Curious what Uni thinks of Bucks’ coaching tonight.

 

Thank goodness I’m at a track meet all day and missed it. The boxscore is awful enough. If we are going to get killed by Al Horford, then they should pack for summer vacations anyway.

 

They miss Middleton in the 4th quarter. They can't win when Holiday plays as poorly as he did tonight and there's no Middleton to score. Offense looks aimless.

 

Imagine hiring an assistant as your new head coach, getting to see him live in action when his current team’s head coach gets Covid, then watching him have to sweat it out in a playoff game against a team missing its best player.

 

The whole thing with Chris Paul’s mom is weird. Idk what exactly happened, but I’ve read that a kid, who was allegedly inebriated, was repeatedly tapping her on the shoulder and wishing her a happy Mother’s Day despite her asking him to stop.

I totally get that unwanted touching is problematic, so I’m not saying that what the kid did was okay. But there’s people on Twitter calling it assault, which just seems… odd to me. How can tapping someone on the shoulder be considered assault? It seems like we just change the meaning of words whenever we feel like it.

 

Why are people still talking, today, as if it's possible that Jordan Poole injured Ja Morant by grabbing his knee? Wasn't it released that he has a bone bruise? Do people not understand what a bone bruise is?

 

People do not

 

I knew it when it happened. He jumped as a defender on a pump fake and came down awkwardly while banging knees at the same time.

 

The bigger of the Van Gundys is not a good announcer. Master of the obvious. “They are gonna hold this for the last shot.” with 20 seconds left in the half and walking it up.

 

Milwaukee lost this series in the 4th quarter of Game 4.

This, though, is [uck fay]ing embarrassing. Jrue is [dadgum] awful and we can't run a basic offense.

 

Lots of game and series left, but yeah, the offense has looked pitiful. Coach should probably catch some heat for this.